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The entry is the original Scandi gate or essentially back entry to the park. The original gate was located near where Steelhawk is now. Trams would take people from the parking lots to the gate or people walked to the Scandi gate. When the trams went away, the American gate went away and the Scandi gate became the main entrance to the park.

Hi Everyone! Worlds of Fun is a park that has always fascinated me. I'm not even sure why, it just has. The park is in the lower tier of the Cedar Fair chain, no major standout rides, and it's just not all that well held as far as parks go. But for some reason, no matter how many jokes that are made about it, I always seem to have had a soft spot for it. I know it's kinda weird (Six Flags Over Georgia is another park I for some reason have a fascination with), but hey when my annual coaster desert escape was going to include a flight to Kansas City...well...I just had to go! So...starting this off...I got there early...like really early...like so early many of the employees were still just getting there early....like I got there at 9:30 and the park wasn't gonna open till 11 early....(Now that's dedication right...) It wasn't entirely my fault I got there early since my flights were early, and I wasn't gonna wait around in the mess that's KC's airport, but still even I think that was a little extreme. So I wound up sitting on a bench outside the bag check area waiting for the entry area to open... Speaking of entry areas, I keep hearing all this talk about how great Cedar Fair is at building new front gates for their parks. I knew WoF (in one of the few things they've got from CF in recent years) had received one a few years ago, and from the pictures it looked promising. However, this quickly should have been an indication of what I was about to get myself into... The entry plaza, while actually quite ascetically pleasing in my opinion, has some...uhhh..."interesting" qualities. First off, it's at the end of a relatively long straight path that kinda goes through an alley way between what looked like the park's offices/backstage area and the former home of Orient Express...now I knew that the entrance USED to be that way....but I didn't realize it still WAS that way... And secondly, its called "International Plaza" or whatever, but it just randomly dumps you straight into Scandinavia?? So your telling me that Cedar Fair "The king of building entrance plazas", if you will, didn't even bother to put a giant sign in the parking lot saying "Park Entrance This Way " more or less actually put the new entrance next too or near the parking lot! I think I'm beginning to understand how CF treats this park... Anyways, after waiting a while and finally getting into the park which actually opened like 30 minutes early for some reason (unlike a certain other park later on the coaster desert escape....) I made my way back to what I had decided would be the first ride of the day...Mamba! Now (you can probably see where this is going...), all the conventional wisdom for WoF says that you should go to Spinning Dragons first cause low capacity, not the best ops, and high popularity make it consistently one of the longer lines in the park. But, since CF doesn't do off season maintenance during the off season here (I know I know..."supply chain issues"), and Mamba was going to be on one train I decided to do that first instead, which turned out to be both good and bad. The good part was I basically had to wait 10 minutes for a front row ride (I had heard that was the best), the bad...well it was my only Mamba ride for the day, as by the time I came back the line (even with the return times thing) was absurdly long. And how was that one ride? It was fine. I think that's the best way to put it, fine. I'm glad I rode in the front as I like feeling the speed, and the jitters in the helix might have been worse in any other seat. The return trip was fun (Trims were off, whoo hoo!), and I could see how having the mid-course on would really kill the ride, but even with them off...it just...wasn't that great. After Mamba I decided to hit Boomerang since it was right there and of course can only run one train. Again I was glad I rode early as it had another long line later in the day, mostly owing to the one train ops and it being a Saturday in July. This was my first regular Vekoma Boomerang (I've ridden Aftershock at my home park several times, but that's a whole 'nother ballgame), and it was alright but so unmemorable I didn't actually take a picture of it... I didn't think it was bad, just not all that special or great. Oh and it also injured my shoulder muscle...great...it really is amazing in here... After Mamba and Boomerang (and at this point your probably wondering when we are gonna get to the good stuff, to which I say it's Worlds of Fun...) I headed over to Timber Wolf. I know GCI has done quite a bit of work on this over the last few years, including removing the helix, so I was curious to see how it went. And well...I think my opinion of Timber Wolf can be properly summed up by this sign at the ride's exit... ...whatever GCI did to this thing didn't work. This is probably the most jittery (I think that the best word to describe it) wooden coaster I've ridden. I'm pretty tolerant of roughness on wooden coasters, but this was just plain unfun. Throw in the rather uneventful layout and all I want to howl is "OUCH!!!! RMC IT PLEASE!!!" I tried in the front and the back...and yeah no difference... "Oh, you mean we're a normal park and run two trains on our wooden coasters on a busy day (Unlike a certain other park I visited on my coaster desert escape)? Even if it's rough and needs a bunch of work? You don't say..." After Timber Wolf I wondered down the path to Patriot, and at this point the reputation of a smooth fun experience on a B&M invert (this was my first) sounded great! After waiting in the longest line I would wait in all day, which thankfully wasn't terrible thanks to the signature high capacity of B&M inverts, I found myself...sitting in the middle (come on now I wasn't gonna keep waiting at this point, there were greater rides to get to...) kinda underwhelmed (this is starting to become a theme with WoF...). It was fun and all, but it just didn't have the "kick" I was hoping for. I was however, grateful that it was smooth and that that I didn't wait any longer than I did for it. At this point my decision to do Mamba first cost me a credit. By the time I got to it, Spinning Dragons had a VERY long line and I just decided it wasn't worth it. I didn't feel I was missing much be skipping it, and I'm not really a credit whore, so it just gives me a reason to come back I guess. Speaking of Spinning Dragons and the Orient section, can we just take a moment to appreciate how pretty several areas of this park actually are! How come nobody talks about how nice the Orient or Africa/Moroccan village sections of Worlds of Fun look? Sure, the Western Town, Scandinavia, and Americana sections need some help, but I really think the foundations of a beautiful park are there! Now like I mentioned there are some areas that need some work...like this area over by Timber Wolf that's just all fenced off and rotting way. Does anyone know what the story with it is? But that aside, with a little work I really do believe this could be a beautiful park. And I think that is the biggest takeaway for me from my visit to Worlds of Fun. This is a park that has SO MUCH potential, just bursting at the seems with it. All Cedar Fair, or someone else, has to do is put a little bit of money into the place and I am thoroughly convinced it will thrive. Yes, it might need some better rides long term, but in the short with just a little bit more effort I think it could easily move into a mid-tier CF park. Alright NOW we are gonna get to the good GREAT stuff! (Ok, that was a cheap pun...) The reason most people (me aside) actually come to Worlds of Fun...Prowler! And this ride really surprised me! Up until this point I had begun to see why people aren't big fans of this park, with a bunch of just ok but really underwhelming rides. But Prowler changed all of that for me. This is probably the first coaster that I would say makes the trip to a park, by itself, worth it. I wouldn't travel halfway across the country for it, but I would go if I was say on my way to SDC or something like that. Anyways, the ride is just great! People talk about Mystic Timbers as being one of the best out and backs, but (SPOILER ALERT for another stop on this coaster desert escape) Prowler is right up there with it. I go back and forth, although I think the theming on Mystic just pushes it over the top for me. That being said Prowler is a master of the terrain, airtime, feeling out of control, and low and behold, being smooth! Yes, Prowler (and Mystic for that matter) is smooth as a B&M invert! I was very, very impressed, definitely the best ride in the park. It also should be noted that it was really the only ride in the park that the GP were cheering on when the ops asked the obligatory "How was your ride?". If that doesn't say anything about both the park and it's rides I don't know what does... Having now hit all the coasters I was gonna hit, I decided to check out the rest of the park and settled on riding the park's train ride. I hadn't heard much about it but was pleasantly surprised by it. I like trains in theme parks, and I really enjoyed this one. It doesn't have a show or anything, and it's not all that long, but it has a nice layout and some fun live narration! So next time your at Wof pay old Eli a visit, the views of Prowler alone are worth it! I also really like how it adds some cool kinetic energy to the park, it just seems to tie the whole park together really nicely. After a few more rides on Prowler, my time at Worlds of Fun came to an end. I had to meet up with the rest of my party so I wound up missing out on the flats (Cyclone Sam's and Zulu had lines, and Falcon's Flight never opened), and Viking Voyager but I guess those along with Spinning Dragons gives me reason to come back. I also can't wait to come back and ride that next generation Skyline Skywarp their adding.... Jokes aside, I would really just like to see CF take an interest in this park and spend some money sprucing it up. It won't take that much, even if for their 50th they skipped the coaster (I know that's a weird thing for an enthusiast to say...) and just spent a bunch of money doing landscaping and remodeling throughout the whole park would really go a long way to making this a really good little park. Personally I would like to see a traditional sit down looping coaster ala Orient Express return to the park, but if the current rumors hold true they'll hopefully get something even cooler! The fact that even their carousel is a hand me down (from Geauga Lake of all places, what will their next addition be Grizzly from CGA...whoops I better not jinx it!) show me how CF treats this park, and I really do think that's a shame. I think if someone, even within Cedar Fair, came along that really cared about the park and spent a little time, money, and care on it, it could be....well....a world of fun! Thanks to @prozach626 and @WOF_Fan for the tips and advice! I really appreciated it! I have 3 more of these trip reports to do from my annual great coaster desert escape, plus hopefully one for my home park, which should get done real soon! See you then!

^

The carousel from Geauga Lake is a big upgrade from the one we had before. It was a much smaller carousel. They both operated in the park until Falcon's Flight replaced the original smaller carousel.

If you think Timber Wolf is rough now, good thing you didn't ride it a couple years ago before the near complete retrack.

Absolutely agree with this - many of the key leaders of the industry have a significant number of historical connections. In fact, as mentioned above, the former Schwarzkopf factory still exists very close (like, almost just down the block) from the Gerstlauer headquarters.

Anton died in 2001. Intamin's roots are traced back to Schwarzkopf Industries and also Hubert Gerstlauer left Schwarzkopf when they were having financial issues in 1982 to start Gerstlauer. If you track back every company currently manufacturing, its very rare to not find connections to either Schwarzkopf or Arrow. Both were the original innovators of modern coasters.

These are two world class rides and I feel like yeah, a strength of Orion is the setting. I very much enjoyed buzzing tree tops and the sense of speed and enjoyment it gave me versus looking out over a parking lot. That was meant to be a compliment to Orion versus smack talking of Fury.

Oh my. The man died, son.

I'm younger than you and I think Shockwave and Mindbender are the second best coasters in their respective parks. So I guess opinions exist or something?

I never realized how right you were until I looked back at these three pictures of Fury.

^ the bonus is that the storytelling, and set up for the hotel guests is amazing! Pretty fully immersive. here is the check-in packet for guests: room keys go in that packet/pocket on the left logbook with hotel info, and notepad postcards! what holds the room key. . .but also folds out into: map of hotel and flipside is map of Rookburgh - the area hotel guests (and only hotel guests) have access to after park close F.L.Y. passes: and in the room? fancy chocolates!

I spent like 20 minutes scrubbing KT's hands from that super permanent marker!!!